Full title: Garlic, Mint, and Sweet Basil. Essays on Marseilles, Mediterranean Cuisine, and Noir Fiction
Between 0 and 1: Zero (i.e. borrowed from local library)
Just over a hundred pages long, and therefore readable in an hour or maybe less, this tiny book is a combination of things, and for that reason it is likely to please on multiple levels. It is also (because such are the ups and downs of life) a book by an author who died in 2000, when he wasn't yet 55 years old. Jean-Claude Izzo, author of noir and detective novels, gave in this deceptively slender volume a symphonic description of his native Marseille and, with it, of the whole of the Mediterranean region. The text is copiously splashes with references to good food, good urban settings, good literature and good music.
Author: Jean-Claude Izzo
Genre: Nonfiction
Attributes: 107p, paperback
Publisher: Europa (2013)
Attributes: 107p, paperback
Publisher: Europa (2013)
Just over a hundred pages long, and therefore readable in an hour or maybe less, this tiny book is a combination of things, and for that reason it is likely to please on multiple levels. It is also (because such are the ups and downs of life) a book by an author who died in 2000, when he wasn't yet 55 years old. Jean-Claude Izzo, author of noir and detective novels, gave in this deceptively slender volume a symphonic description of his native Marseille and, with it, of the whole of the Mediterranean region. The text is copiously splashes with references to good food, good urban settings, good literature and good music.
It is at the
same time a memoir, a pseudo-travel account, and a review (yes, at times it
feels like you're reading the review of a book – the book of the Mediterranean
Sea), all of which glorify an already heavily romanticised image of the region.
Izzo dishes out a lot of superlatives and he's proud of every single one of
them, the way he's also proud (if saddened too) of things that don't look very
good when seen in perspective.
Most
importantly, though, Garlic, Mint, and
Sweet Basil is a collection of texts about communion and community. The
"Mediterranean Basin" (an ugly term which, by the way, is never
mentioned - thanks god!) is described in the broad strokes of universality.
This is, at the end of the day, the origin of Europe itself, a cauldron filled
to the brim with cultures that make it "creole" in its diversity.
Source: Marvelous Marseilles |
Zooming in
from the Mediterranean, the texts hover over Marseilles like a magnifying glass.
They are very sensual. They speak of smells, tastes, sounds, tactile pleasures,
beautiful women, wonderful food, memorable wine. But when you think things have
gotten too sweet, too sunny-skyish, there's a warning. A warning about the
threat from the North, from mainland France, which makes insistent attempts at
homogenizing a space that's too hybrid to be bottled up in a juice of
conformity and uniformity.
It's easy to
see how admirably Izzo believed in the power of Marseilles to remain what it's
always been: not only French but also European; not only European but also
North-African and Middle Eastern; not only those but also South American and Caribbean
and things of the rest of the world.
Because of
this wealth of locations and points of origins, a constant feeling of abundance
transpires from the texts; a feeling that Marseilles is so many things at the
same time that it is impossible to settle on one and call it its essence. Marseille
is a city of light, a city of music, a city of history, a city of delight.
Hence the superlatives, hence the exaltations.
"Marseilles always exaggerates. That is her essence. And basically nothing has changed [since its ancient origins]. [...] When the harbour opens its arms to you, then and only then you discover the eternal meaning of the city: Hospitality. Marseilles gives herself without resistance to those who know how to take her and love her. Marseilles is a myth. That is the only thing there is to see. To embrace. The rest can be as futile or vain as anything else. We might even say that the city is just like those fake blondes you meet on her streets. They display only what they are not."
All this, of
course, is like saying I don't really know how to describe this city. And at
the same time like saying, oh yes, I know. I love this city so much I can take
revenge on it, on its fall into fake polishes, exaggerated displays, futile
add-ons. It's the same as loving its mix of cultures, its colourful settings,
its long history, the way it deals with multiplicity. But this is maybe how every
city should be loved. The way Orhan Pamuk described his Istanbul, hailing the
city's appeal without blushing for its shortcomings.
One can only
give in to the temptation of praising the unusual nature of such a place:
"Atypical is not the word for Marseilles. Unconventional is more accurate."
Which may be
doing a better job of defining this space of contradictions and agreements,
where the Mediterranean appears to be at the same time a bridge and a mote.
In any case,
Izzo's attitude towards Marseilles was so strong it seeped into his other
proses. To prove it, he wrote an entire Marseilles trilogy, in a genre he
baptised "Mediterranean Noir." And just in case that wasn't apparent
to the reader of the present book, a short story ends it, a story featuring
Izzo's favourite character, detective Fabio Montale; a story which, in order to
prove the resemblance between author and protagonist, goes on to declare, once
again, this special love for Marseilles:
Jean-Claude Izzo (1945-2000). Source: Genova Mente Locale |
"I knocked back my drink and stood up. I felt like going and losing myself in Marseilles. In her smells. In the eyes of her women. My city. I knew that I always had an appointment there with the fleeting happiness of exiles. The only kind that suited me. A real consolation."
This is the
rest of the book in a nutshell. With it, the recurrent sentiments take front
stage again, and the point is made as if anew.
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